


The Small Things

by Erisette



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Death, Ep 71, Families of Choice, Gen, Team as Family, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 10:32:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8621053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisette/pseuds/Erisette
Summary: "What is--oh, no." Pike's voice holds all the devastation Vex feels as Grog lowers her gently beside the mangled body in the snow. 
"I can't heal for shit," Kima says tensely, "I tried but--well. I can't raise the dead."





	

**Author's Note:**

> trickf00ts: I kind of want a Scanlan death just for the love that would follow... (http://trickf00ts.tumblr.com/post/153330918358)  
> me, softly but urgently: oh no  
> also me: watches Ep 71 again  
> me, less softly, more urgently: oh NO.

_Later,_  
_if you faced the death of bombs and bullets_  
_you did not do it with a banner,_  
_you did it with only a hat to_  
_cover your heart._  
_You did not fondle the weakness inside you_  
_though it was there._  
_Your courage was a small coal_  
_that you kept swallowing._  
_If your buddy saved you_  
_and died himself in so doing,_  
_then his courage was not courage,_  
_it was love; love as simple as shaving soap._

_-from ' Courage' by Anne Sexton_

 

 

  
Pike going unconscious is the _worst_.

He had nightmares for months after that demon cut her in half, and seeing her go down under the dragon's attack brings the fear back at breath-stealing levels. There is blood in the snow and in her white hair, and he shouts out, a wordless sound, pouring all the power he can bring to bear into his weak-ass healing spell. It hits, he knows it does, sees her arch back as she draws a huge breath. "You've got this, Pikey!" he shouts--weaves magic into that shout, too--and turns to bolt away.

He was just out of range of Vorugal's teeth and claws. Unfortunately, he didn't account for the tail, and as it slams into him the breath is driven from his chest and he tastes copper. As he topples into the snow, his last thought is "Shit, fuck, _Kaylie_ \--" before consciousness and thought flee.

(he doesn't feel the claws come down, each as long as his torso, or the great gaping wounds they tear through his back: and maybe that is a kind of kindness)

  
***

  
There is a tense, horrible moment of silence after Percy and Raishan speak when Vex feels sick and dizzy with the certainty that this is not the end, that the Diseased Deceiver will take the opportunity when they are weak (so weak, they are broken, three of them are down and dying) to take them down--or that Keyleth will snap and be the one to start the fight. It is a long pause, or seems long because of the number of heartbeats she fits into it, before the green dragon disappears. Then Vex is on her broom and moving before she hardly knows what she's doing. Grog is charging for Pike, of course, and Lady Kima is stomping through the snow to where Scanlan fell; Vex dives straight for her brother, reaching him just after Grog does. She sees him force a potion down both her brother's and her friend's throats and feels another rush of heady relief before practically falling off her broom atop her brother to cast her one healing spell.

He coughs his way back to life, the worst of his wounds closing, as Grog feeds Pike another potion, scolding her the whole time. "Sister--" Vax gasps, and she clings to him for a greedy second before pulling back, because Percy is out on the field somewhere and Keyleth has flown out of view in her elemental form and Scanlan--

" _PIKE_!" Kima bellows, and they all jump. " _Pike! Cleric! Get over here, now!_ " They all look concerned, and Pike tries to get up and move before Grog pulls her firmly to his chest and stands up.

"Come on, Pike, I'll carry you, yeah?" He mostly looks relieved, like he thinks the danger is over, and Vex realizes with a cold shiver of dread that she was possibly the only one who had seen just how badly Vorugal...how Scanlan had...

With a quick, desperate kiss to her brother's cheek, she remounts her broom and takes off as fast as she can. Vax calls out after, and Grog breaks into a run as she swiftly leaves them behind. Kima and Scanlan are not a hundred feet away, and again she dives off the broom---

 

Kima looks grim, battered around the edges but in no way as bad off as some of her family. Scanlan, though, looks--Vex feels a cry tear from her throat at the sight of their bard.

"What is--oh, no." Pike's voice holds all the devastation Vex feels as Grog lowers her gently beside the mangled body in the snow.

"I can't heal for shit," Kima says tensely, "I tried but--well. I can't raise the dead."

The last word falls like a stone in the too-silent air and Vex watches Pike reach a trembling hand to touch Scanlan's side before pulling back. His body is in one piece--barely. Not even Rimefang's near-fatal attack, those months ago, had torn him this badly; there is more blood in the snow than she would have thought could come from such a small body, and his right shoulder is so deeply gouged that Vex is afraid moving him would detach the limb entirely. Silence and stillness are anathema to their bard, and in the stillness of death Vex finds him almost unrecognizable.

"Oh, _no_ ," Pike moans, quietly, as Grog kneels down with distress all over his face.

"You can fix him, yeah? You can fix _anything_. You brought Percy back, and, and me, and--"

"I don't--" Pike cuts herself off, and the familiar look of determination settles over her wet face as her hand closes around her holy symbol. Two of the fingers are crooked, badly broken, and somehow that's the sight that finally drives Vex to her knees. Pike drags a gauntleted hand over her eyes and nods once, almost viciously. "Yes. I can bring him back." Her hands, surely as stiff from cold as Vex's own, fumble at her pouch of spell reagents; Grog gently takes over, untying the pouch from her belt and helping her spill the cascade of tiny diamonds over Scanlan's poor ravaged back.

"Here," Grog says, and from his own pack pulls three small stones--one of them appears to be a very fine emerald, and the other two are common river stones. He places them carefully on the body, as ceremoniously as Pike's diamonds, and Vex chokes on something that could either be a laugh or a sob.

 

"What the fu-" "--gods, Vex, how--" "--no, _oh no_ , oh no, oh--"

The rest of their party arrives almost at the same time, in a cacophony of voices, just as Pike is beginning to shakily recite the first lines of her Revivify spell. Vex feels someone come up against her back, knows it's Percy and fumbles a hand back to grip the hem of his coat. "Gods, Percy, what do we do?"

"But Scanlan _never_ falls unconscious." Keyleth's voice has gone high and childlike. "Never!"

"He did to the last white dragon," Percy replies grimly, and Vex feels his large hand close over hers and squeeze before he moves to crouch behind Pike. "Would it help if I...?" He trails off and Pike never stops her casting, but nods a little frantically. Percy rests one hand on Pike's armored shoulder and another on Scanlan's, and begins quietly weaving his own Celestial voice in with Pike's. His face is terrible.

 

Vex is shamed, suddenly, to just be sitting there doing fuck all. Turning away just long enough to pop Trinket out of Raven's Slumber, she allows herself only a moment of burying her hands in his fur before she pulls back. "We need you to stand guard, darling. Help us keep him safe, okay?" Scanlan is not Trinket's favorite person by a sizable margin, but he still rumbles mournfully before beginning a slow but untiring patrol. "Keyleth," she says next, and the druid flinches so hard she almost tips over. "Darling," she says more gently this time, "Could you help Pike and my brother? Do you have spells left?"

"Oh!" Keyleth scrubs the tears off her red-cheeked face and nods. "Yes. Yes! I didn't hardly...yes." She shuffles forward on her knees, inelegant and beautiful, and places her hands on Pike's back, then Vax's. Warm, healing energy pulses into each of them, and Vex feels herself sag in relief as flesh knits and bones groan back into place. Pike wavers, briefly, as her fingers realign with wet cracks, but then pulls herself up as her color comes back. "I'll save one for Scanlan," Keyleth says, lip quivering. "For when we bring him back." Vax puts his hand at the back of her head and strokes her bright hair.

A sudden low roar from Trinket sends a surge of sickly energy through the group, and the twins leap to their feet, eyes seeking out the danger. What they find is a group of Ravinites pounding into the snowy battleground in a ragged column, and Vex releases a very low bearlike growl. Her brother evidently agrees. " _Now_ they fucking show up?" He spits, and lurches a half-step forwards before stopping and throwing an agonized look back.

"Well, I'm fuck-all use here, but _this_ I can handle," Kima's abrasive voice rings out as she shoulders between the two half-elves and makes for the new arrivals. "I've got this, you concentrate on getting the little shit-head back on his feet." Caught, Vex takes her brother's hand in her own and turns back. Keyleth has been at work; the snow is gone fully twenty feet around, and little soft blades of grass are trying to work themselves out of the thin earth. Keyleth herself is sitting at Scanlan's feet, hugging her knees to her chest, and the dirt around her is dotted with little blood-red marigolds. She looks up at their approach and tries to smile.

The ritual is still going, although Pike's voice is becoming slower and slower; her sweet greyish face is sheened with sweat, and Percy now seems to be holding her up physically as well as with his voice. "Shit, " says Vax, and takes the one long step needed to crouch by the...by Scanlan. "Hey, buddy." He starts to put his hand on Scanlan's back, but hesitates at the last minute, afraid to hurt him more. Vex comes to press herself to his side, and his hand finally settles on the bard's hair. "Hey," he says, more softly still. "You're ruining your reputation, you know. You're supposed to be able to throw yourself in a dungheap and come up covered in diamonds. It's what we rely on you for: we all get in stupid shit, but more than anyone, you're the one we can count on to get us out of it. Even if you're the one who got us in it in the first place."

"Fucking right," Grog rumbles. He is weeping, unashamedly, into his beard.

Vex smiles at him, a little twisted thing, and trails his hand down to very gently tug at the tip of Scanlan's pointed ear. "Leave the shit behind and keep going, yeah?" He rakes his other hand through his hair, pulls loose the raven feather that was behind his ear and places it carefully along Scanlan's spine. "You taught me that. Still have a lot to teach me. We need you here, buddy. Please." The last word comes out strangled as his face crumples, and Vex lays her own hand atop his.

"You heard my brother, darling," she says, confidentially, because Scanlan never didn't want to know a secret. "He means it, you know. He needs you; we all do. What would Vox Machina do without our leader?" In her hair is an owlbear feather, the one she collected on the shore of the lake that hid the Raven Queen's temple, and had been wearing when she died: it comes to rest next to Vax's, and the edges start to darken as the blood begins to soak in.

 

The chanting stops, so suddenly it makes Vex start, and they all seem to hold their breaths. The diamonds, and Grog's stones, and Vex's feather, seem to turn to golden flecks of light that slowly sink into the body. Vax's plume breaks apart into fragments, glowing a red so dark it is nearly black, before joining the other offerings. The magic slowly, slowly knits the torn flesh back together as blood gradually begins to seep out again; but there is no movement, and no sign of breath. "Turn him over," Pike says, hoarse, and Grog is doing so before Vex can even start to move. His huge hands are impossibly careful. Keyleth makes a horrible choked sound as he is laid on his back, and Vex wants to join her, for there is not even a hint of purple or scrap of pink left in Scanlan's clothing; just bright crimson red. One of the terrible claws must have driven through the side of his neck, for there is a raw half-closed gash along his throat that drips, drips, drips. Pike leans forward, still supported by Percival, and tenderly cradles his face. Her next words are quiet, conversational--and in Gnomish. After saying her piece, she leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead.

 

Pike's pale hair, falling out of its pins, conceals both their faces for a moment.

Two.

Three--

 

\--and Scanlan's chest expands with breath.

Vex, in contrast, finds herself entirely breathless. Vax isn't: he laughs, tearful and joyous. Keyleth isn't: she babbles, words spilling out faster than she can properly voice them, as she lunges forward and casts a healing spell. Percy makes a little noise and buries his head in his hands. Grog tilts his head back and shouts at the sky, and Pike draws back with a smile so bright Vex has to blink and look away. Twelve hands help Scanlan sit up, and he looks around at them with glazed eyes and tries to smile. "What did I miss?" he says...or tries to say.

His voice comes out barely audible, a rough hoarse whisper, and his hands fly to his throat where the gash from Vorugal's claw is still a raw wound. Vex wouldn't have thought it possible for that bloodless face to become paler, but his freckles suddenly are as stark as ink against expensive paper.

"Oh, _Scanlan_." Keyleth sounds as gutted as Vex feels. "Oh, no...Pike...can't you...."

"Hey, Shorty, hey--" Vax is the first to reach forward, and he lays his hands on Scanlan's throat. "Hey." Unlike Pike, he doesn't close his eyes when he prays, and he looks Scanlan square in the face as his hands glow with that red-black light. "We've got you." When he draws them away there is only a wide scar remaining, red and new. Scanlan traces it with his fingers, swallows, tries again.

"Thank..." it comes out clear, and tears begin to spill from his eyes. "Thank you. _All_ of you."

"Little buddy," Grog bawls, and draws him into his arms. "We thought you were gone for _ev_ er!"

"Oi, none of that." Already his voice is returning to normal, sounding strong and confident. "Would I leave my family in the lurch like that?"

"Never," Pike said, and Keyleth and Vax echoed her. "Not a chance."

Scanlan is not escaping their Goliath's arms any time soon, but he gets himself enough free space to turn around and reach his hands out to them all. "Really." Scanlan's voice is often squeaky, usually beautiful, and rarely quiet: but there is a sincerity in it now that Vex isn't sure she's ever heard before, except perhaps at Pike's resurrection. "Thank you. All of you. You're likely to give a man something to live for."

 

_They sat there for a minute, a battered bloody mess, smiling at each other like idiots in the middle of the one patch of green for miles. It was Scanlan, of course--of course!--who broke the moment. "Well, what are we all sitting here for? There's a dragon to take apart! A fiend to take apart! A hoard to claim! Is Tooma here? I'm ready to give her a piece of my mind. Grog, friend, give an old gnome a ride, won't you?"_

_"That fucking bard," Vax said, laughing, and rose to his feet, extending a hand each to Keyleth and Vex._

_"I am offended, Vax'ildan, offen--Pike, love of my life, are you alright? You've blood all in your lovely hair."_

_There was a healing spell worked into those words. "Oh,_ Scanlan _," Pike said, fondly._


End file.
